raif’s random rants…

thanks to seth godin, who brought this site to our attention last week. it’s been my new 2nd favorite time killer after the lost season 5 dvd set i got for xmas.

it’s called the vintage ad browser (www.vintageadbrowser.com) and it does what it says. you can search for and browse through over 100,000 vintage ads. this is what mad men fans like myself live for (i bet the writers for that show knew about this site way before we did)

here are some of my favorites:

this one i couldn’t resist. gotta love the floppy disk he’s holding up…

and, this sure looks like a great deal. 64K RAM for $1,495!

this was the predecessor to Sinclair’s ZX Spectrum – my first computer that i started coding BASIC on when i was 9… oh, good old days…

believe it or not, i still have that Sinclair ZX Spectrum. it’s hanging on the wall in my office. here’s a picture of it.

vintage ads also have a sister site called coverbrowser (http://www.coverbrowser.com).

enjoy!

well, this is going to be old news to most folks, but for some reason i feel obliged to make an announcement here on my blog – which is loooooong overdue.

i have officially made the switch to become the CTO of Local Dirt (www.localdirt.com) – an online marketplace for local food.

local dirt’s founder/ceo heather and i were introduced through a mutual trusted mentor (let’s leave him at that for now, there’ll be more on that in the coming months :) we hit it off very quickly and it has been an absolute pleasure to work with her in the last few months. i am very excited about the company we’ve set out to build.

there is so much to read and learn about the local food movement, and i encourage you to do so. i would start with michael pollan’s omnivore’s dilemma. if you haven’t read it already, go and read it now. it will change how you think about what we eat…

we launched localdirt.com at the DEMO conference in san diego in september and even won a DEMOGod award. you can view our 6-minute DEMO presentation at http://bit.ly/localdirt

although i am no longer day-to-day at carsala, i am very excited about that business as well. i have full confidence in tyler and the team. they’re kicking serious ass and they’ll continue to do so…

in the meantime, my ramblings here will probably start to sway in the direction of our food system and the usual randomness… thanks for tuning in, and as always, feel free to reach out if i can help in anyway: raif at raif dot com

about to announce some big changes in raifland… stay tuned…

or, checkout http://www.demo.com/live at 15:22 PST today (September 22nd, 2009).

on february 19th, fortune magazine ran this article about facebook.

overall it had some good observations, decent insights and asked some interesting questions. but nothing that hasn’t been discussed elsewhere. all in all it did a good job of providing a state-of-the-nation on the fast growing social networking site that now has 175 million users.

my beef with the article was the following chart.

the problem is that comparing facebook to any of these technologies is NOT a fare comparison at all.

each of these technologies had two main barriers to adoption:

first is the upfront and the ongoing cost to the user. to get a telephone, you had to pay the connection fees and then incur monthly fees – flat AND usage based. same with cellular phones. first cellphones were ridiculously expensive to buy and the rate plans were outrageous. similar with a tv. even now a tv costs hundreds of dollars. and to get any utility out of it you either need cable or a dvd collection or both. same with the ipod. cost hundreds of dollars and then more for buying mp3s.

facebook doesn’t cost anything to start and there are no ongoing costs either. other then you’re time.

the second major barrier each of these technologies had was around infrastructure. back in 1876 when supposedly telephones were available, it didn’t mean that you could just get it just because you were ready to pay for it. you had to wait for the infrastructure to roll out to your area (the wires etc.) similar issue with ipod. you needed an internet connection, and fast enough computer before you could get meaningful utility out of an ipod. also, not sure where ipod would be without itunes…

facebook did not face any of these infrastructure challenges either.

reaching 175 million users in 5 years is not shabby at all. however, that doesn’t imply anything about how it compares to the telephone, the television, the ipod or the cellular phone.

overall, a pointless comparison offering no insights whatsoever. fortune mag. FAIL.

yikes.

starting is easy. finishing is hard. to keep going is harder.

that’s how i feel of this small piece of web real estate called raif.com. hard to believe i haven’t done a single post since august.

besides launching carsala.com, hiring, moving, holidays and many other lame excuses, what’s really happened is called twitter.

twitter has officially replaced my need for ranting, writing, and exposure.

however, lately i’ve been wanting to put together pieces that require more thought than 140 characters. which i believe is a key strength and weakness of twitter. the quickness and immediacy of the 140 characters is very powerful. however, it does lend itself to way too many retweets without commentary or insights, half-baked thoughts and just weak arguments.

as people flock to twitter and the doomsday of blogging is reported everywhere else, i think that there will be a wave of people coming back to blogging for things that they just can’t quite fit into 140 characters.

true, twitter has changed self publishing forever. however, i do believe that both blogging and tweeting will have their place in anyone’s toolbox who believes they have something worth sharing.

sometimes starting a company is like playing house… especially when you’re setting up your office.

both my co-founder tyler and i have always felt strongly that the environment we set up now will play a significant role in shaping the culture and the values of the company we’re building at carsala. we are also both pretty frugal to a fault, so we started off for our interior decoration with a very (VERY) limited budget.

we ended up with some pretty cool looking desks with trestles and somewhat comfortable chairs, each under $100.

next challenge was to find some art for the walls.

my pick for the technology and marketing room was the photograph above by renowned photojournalist w. eugene smith called “dream street”. i felt it was very appropriate for a handful of people who have set out to change the single largest retail segment of the US economy (44M used cars are sold every year, representing $365 billion).

the entrepreneurial spirit is really one with the spirit of the dreamer… the pursuit of  creation of something out of nothing… the pursuit of something better and greater…

“dream street” embodies this entrepreneurial spirit – the spirit we have at carsala.